Category: Politics

The Seminar Network, which includes the constellation of groups funded by the billionaire industrialist Charles Koch and around 700 like-minded conservatives and libertarians who contribute at least $100,000 annually, will now operate as Stand Together.

Freedom Partners, an entity that was once used to air campaign
commercials, will cease to exist. Americans for Prosperity will now
oversee all political and policy efforts. Groups that cater to specific
constituencies, like Libre for Latinos or Concerned Veterans for
America, have moved under the AFP umbrella.

If you doubt the United States is controlled by the rich and corporations:

In 2019, state legislatures across the country are enacting radical
new restrictions on abortion. Alabama banned virtually all abortions.
Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Ohio banned all abortions after six
weeks, which is before many women even know they are pregnant. Missouri
banned abortion after nine weeks.

While these policies are extreme, the politicians responsible have the financial backing of some of America’s largest companies. In their corporate literature, these companies present themselves as champions of women and gender equality. But they have collectively donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to politicians seeking to roll back reproductive rights.

Those on disability benefits and low incomes will be among worst affected

Corporations, which drove the train, got even more of a tax cut than they wanted. Yet they refused to promise that their huge tax break would hike worker wages. Medium-sized and big businesses got something they had only dreamed of — though in provisions so badly written one tax expert called them a “travesty.”

Deficit hawks, that is, those opposed to creating any new federal debt, hemmed and hawed and finally folded, as one commentator put it, “like a cheap suit.”

An idea that would have raised $1 trillion and paid for much of the tax cuts was soundly defeated by a powerful business lobby.

Republicans used $1.5 trillion in what some call accounting gimmicks to either hide the true cost of the bill or help justify their votes.

The bill was drafted in secret, partly to keep it from Congress’s own members who, it was feared, would leak it to lobbyists.

[And, of course, the Koch brothers and their fellow plutocrats were involved.]

The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center in September 2016 looked at its
proposals for individual tax cuts and found that by 2025, 99.6 percent
of its net tax cuts would go to the top 1 percent of earners. The
nonpartisan Tax Policy Center said the plan would cause the federal debt
to rise $3 trillion in its first 10 years and $6.6 trillion by the end
of the second decade.

Republicans have long taken to complaining when their warped ideology and tribe are questioned. One of their recent complaints: “Republicans are discriminated against on social media”. That argument is, of course, bullshit.

At a Twitter all-hands meeting on March 22, an employee asked a blunt question: Twitter has largely eradicated Islamic State propaganda off its platform. Why can’t it do the same for white supremacist content?

In separate discussions verified by Motherboard, that employee said Twitter hasn’t taken the same aggressive approach to white supremacist content because the collateral accounts that are impacted can, in some instances, be Republican politicians.

It has also been observed that if Twitter banned white supremacists, many of those banned would be Trump supporters, and that would result in an uproar from the cult of the moron. Apparently, Twitter prefers to avoid an uproar from the moron’s cult.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced Monday that she will no longer enforce a provision in federal law that bars religious organizations from providing federally funded educational services to private schools.

So how does the “Budget for a Better America” treat Medicare and the other programs that Trump vowed to safeguard at all costs? By calling for even larger cuts to them than the White House proposed this time last year, when it formally abandoned Trump’s campaign pledges. The budget for the 2019 fiscal year called for five hundred and fifty billion dollars in cuts to Medicare over ten years. With the budget deficit skyrocketing as a consequence of the Trump-G.O.P. tax bill, the 2020 budget would reduce spending on Medicare by eight hundred and forty-five billion dollars over the next decade. Even in Washington, that’s a lot of money.

"Local media" (is it?)
For those who aren’t quite sure why these media layoffs keep happening, or think “it’s the internet!” or “people don’t pay to subscribe,” there’s a lot more going on. Though that is part of that. Here’s a cliffs notes version - not exhaustive but it hits the highlights (Twitter thread)

Did you know?

Funding Corruption

The Lie of “Nader Cost Gore the 2000 Election”

It’s one of the oft-cited lies, regurgitated by people and by the media (they’re lazy). Gore lost by 543 votes. 200,000 Florida Democrats voted for Bush! There were 8 third parties running, and ANY ONE of them got more than Gores 543-vote loss. Most of those who voted for Nader would have never voted for Gore, anyway. This lie is promulgated by the duopoly to discourage voters from voting for a third party.Dispelling the Myth